17I 
CHAPTER VII. 
ZOANTHARIA. 
“*T saw the living pile ascend 
The mausoleum of its architects, 
Still dying upwards as their labour closed : 
Slime the material, but the slime was turned 
To adamant by their petrific touch.” 
Montcomery’s Pelican Island. 
THE creatures which constitute the class Zoantharia are quite great 
personages. Some of them are eighteen or twenty inches long; at 
the same time, others scarcely exceed the eighth part of an inch in 
length. They live in all seas, and seem to have existed through many 
ages of the earth’s history ; they appear at an early geological period, 
and they have performed an important part in its formation. 
The name of Zoantharia was first given to the class by Dr. J. E. 
Gray ; but here we give it a somewhat wider signification, embracing 
under it the madrepores and starred stones of Lesueur, who was 
reminded of a field enamelled with small flowers when he saw the 
little polyps of Porites astroides in full blow. ‘ But it is only,” says 
Johnston, “when they lie with their upper disc expanded, and their 
tentacula displayed, that they solicit comparison with the hosts of 
Flora; for, when contracted, the polyps of the madrepores conceal 
themselves in their calcareous cups, and the actinia hide their beauty, 
assuming the shape of an obtuse cone or hemisphere of a fleshy con- 
sistence, or elongating themselves into a sort of flabby cylinder that 
indicates a state of relaxation and indolent repose.” 
These zoantharia are flesh-eaters, and consume quantities truly 
prodigious of animals such as crustaceans, worms, and small fishes. 
They are all marine, nearly all attached to the same spot for life, and 
they live in colonies. Some few are isolated and live by themselves, 
either free or attached to the soil. They differ altogether from the 
animals belonging to the Adcyonaria by the number and peculiar form 
of their tentacula. These appendages in the Zoantharia never present 
the dipinnate arrangement which is observable in the Adyonaria. 
